Family Visit

[poliphilo]

Alice and the kids are visiting for the first time in a year- and staying at the Hilton in Maidstone because it's the nearest place they could get into which has a swimming pool. Yesterday there was football and Lego and Ivy told me the plot of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and how her mother hit the pause button on a particularly gruesome image- and that was the end of that. Still, as I said to Ivy, "Once you've seen a thing, you've seen it".

"Ivy is dark", says her mother, approvingly.

And the other day (I think I've got this straight) she- Ivy, that is- was walking round their Leicestershire village with a divining rod- and using it to talk to a ghost. The ghost was a lady who'd lived to be 100. Ivy was asking questions and the ghost was answering- and some of the questions Ivy was asking were designedly nonsensical. I don't doubt any of this because I'm firmly convinced the world is very much more interesting than the Guardian, the Telegraph and the BBC think it is.

On the way down yesterday they had stopped off at Chartwell- which is the only major heritage site in the area I've never visited. I've never visited because I think Churchill was essentially Boris Johnson plus genius- and I'm afraid I might say so out loud while looking at his furniture. Alice says the house is "very Kentish" and the gardens "nice".

We gave Alice subscriptions to the National Trust and English Heritage as a sort of combined birthday and Christmas present- and she's intent on getting the most out of them. Today she plans to view Scotney Castle on her way over here for a barbecue and tomorrow I'm all signed up- to a tune of £25 (because I'm not a member)- to accompany them to Knole Park and Ightham Mote...

Comments

[cmcmck]

If the NT and EH don't come to their senses soon about how one gets into their places, we are likely to let both memberships lapse as we are getting nothing out of them even with a dozen and more properties on the doorstep.

They spout constant green credentialism yet are assuming during the covid stuff that everyone drives and that no one ever walks anywhere!

[qatsi]

I visited Chartwell a few years ago. The weather was indifferent to poor. The house is nice, but I didn't see the gardens at their best.

You may well be right about Churchill and Johnson, but I think you understate it. Churchill got lucky a few times, or made his own luck. Johnson has had plenty of opportunity but seems to squander it on every occasion. Still, 40% or so will vote for him, or so they say to pollsters. I think that is all that matters to him.

[poliphilo]

Johnson is surrounded in his own party by third-raters and opposed by a Labour party that is expending most of its energy in internal warfare. For as long as this state of affairs continues there is unlikely to be any meaningful challenge to his leadership.